Psychology/Psychiatry

Workers Abroad: The Repatriation Problem

For a number of decades, corporate entities have made financial investments in expatriating workers. Such investments are supposed to cover monetary compensation, skill development, and the toil that future assignments might entail. Due to overseas business interests, professional researchers have had to acknowledge “reentry” — the repatriation phase of international assignment — since at least the 1960s.

Where’s the Nurture?

Nature versus Nurture is still used to broadly categorize the influences on human development, literally, what make us human. It is a question tied with the past (even back to Shakespeare) when the understanding of the genetic blueprint was vague, a gap we’ve filled in with theory. Nature was what you inherited from your parents and nurture was everything else – total environmental influences.

Mephistopheles, Child of Christian Civilization

The Self or Anthropos quaternio symbolically represents what we cannot, in fact, see. Carl Jung’s Aion, Volume 9 of his Collected Works brilliantly describes the Self and shadow archetypes as quaternios. Archetypes only become visible through their symbols, not themselves as such. Anthropos is a reflection of the “higher Adam” (Self, or the center of the unconscious) and occupies the upper apex of the diamond-shaped quaternio which is joined at its base by a mirror image of itself.  Thus, the diamond appears to be two pyramids attached at their bases with an apex point and a basal point.

Mephistopheles, Child of Christian Civilization

Our next iconic avatar would naturally arrive on the scene near the end of 19th century as Dracula.  However, the 1922 cult classic silent film Nosferatu made in breach of the Dracula copyright actually serves our heuristic purposes better. Although the stories are essentially the same, with the underlying incest theme discussed by anthropologist Robin Fox in The Tribal Imagination, the evil cleric finally looks like a sinister archpriest.

Mephistopheles, Child of Christian Civilization

The modern trope and symbol for the sinister archpriest likely requires some analysis to give it meaning in three dimensions, and to put this being into some kind of social context related to the present spirit of the times. At first, this may seem like an impossible task, given the media’s proliferation in everyday life. When therefore, is the individual not inundated with a glut of images in print, social media, television, satellite, cable stations, etc., that can even be accessed on one’s personal cell phone, tablet or other electronic devices?

On the “Ethics” of Complicity in Torture

On November 12, 2014 the American Psychological Association commissioned a study of the organization’s relationship with its own ethics guidelines, the national security establishment’s interrogation practices, and torture. Now released, the report by David H. Hoffman and others1 confirms the APA’s complicity in Department of Defense programs and the APA’s intentional misrepresentation of its role, deluding its membership and the American people.

The Pain of Modern Life: Loneliness and Isolation

Humanity is a group. As Mohandas Gandhi famously said: “All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family.” This is not a sycophantic religious concept, but the fact of our inherent nature; a nature that the current World socio-economic order systematically works against, forcing us to live in unnatural, unhealthy, un-fulfilling, and unjust ways.

Are We Being Driven Like Cattle?

As we stand in line for security checks at airports, we may have the distinct feeling that we are being herded like cattle. Air travel has changed, and has become much less pleasant, since the fear of terrorism replaced the fear of communism as the excuse that governments give for diverting colossal sums of money from desperately needed social goals to the bottomless pit of war. Innocent grandmothers, and their grandchildren, are required to remove their shoes and belts. Everyone is treated like a criminal. It is a humiliating experience.

A Nation of Millennial Entitlements

A student sued Misericordia College because she failed a nursing class. Twice.
She said she suffered psychological problems. Those problems included anxiety, depression, and poor concentration skills.
The college had agreed to allow her to retake the final examination last summer.
It set her up in a stress-free room, gave her extra time to complete the test, and did not provide a proctor. The professor said the student could call her by cell phone. That professor was in another building monitoring another test.
The student again failed the required course.